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Thursday, August 9, 2012

Why we believe "youth ministry" matters?

Because we host an annual open house for new families in our community and new 6th graders entering our middle school ministry our team is forced every year to ask one big question. Why do we do youth ministry? I love that we are forced to revisit the question very year because all of us drift toward auto pilot unless we are challenged. Our open house forces our team to cast vision to a new group of families every year. Here is why we create environments for teenagers at our church...

Our mission at Relevant Student Ministry is to provide every teenager in Clarksville a youth ministry that will help them find Christ and grow in Christ. We try to focus all our energy on what Jesus said was most important ("relevant") in life...
29 Jesus replied, “The most important commandment is this: ‘Listen, O Israel! The Lord our God is the one and only Lord. 30 And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.’ 31 The second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ No other commandment is greater than these.” Mark 12:29-31 (NLT)

Because of our mission we have created an environment for middle school students called The Mix and one for high school students called Remix. Here is why we created this environments...

The Mix and Remix are two environments we have created to help teenagers gather with other teens and set aside a few hours of your week to LOVE GOD. We want to give teens a few hours to focus on what matters most!

The Mix and Remix are places where it is safe to set aside all our assumptions about faith and God and seek our clarity…TOGETHER. It is OK to doubt, it is OK to question. Our hope is that in the middle of the search teens will discover the unconditional love of Jesus Christ.

The Mix and Remix are here because there are people all around us wondering what is life all about? We want to partner with teens as they strive to lead their friends to faith in Jesus Christ. We believe that teens lead other teens to Jesus.

The Mix and Remix strive to help provide every teen with an adult who will invest in their life as their small group leader. Every teen needs a few adults and a few friends that will help them grow in their faith.

2 comments:

Great post, very relevant for where we are at in preparing the new year with a new team. Two things stood out; 1) providing teens with adult mentors, and 2) creating an environment exploration. Teens KNOW there is so much more...and helping to seek, search and hopefully find requires the two things I mentioned.